Ad Hudler

So I told my friend in Macon I was going to write for a Southern authors’ blog, and she replied, “Fort Myers, Florida is not the South, Ad – you’re an impostor.”

In defense of myself, I need to say right here and now that I used to live in Macon, which, the last time I checked, was still Southern enough that people there were serving sweet tea and cheese straws and going to Sunday school. Indeed, I know enough about the South to have written my second novel, “Southern Living,” which the Atlanta newspaper called “horrifyingly accurate.”

But back to this Florida-ain’t-the-real-South bit: I beg to differ. Yes, we have our Yankees, plenty of them, but there are some pockets of the Sunshine State that still retain a Southern charm. Looky here:

*Fort Myers, which is so far south we are equidistant between Tampa and Havana, Cuba, is the county seat of Lee County. Yes, as in Robert E. There’s a bust of the bearded fellow downtown, in the middle of a prominent median, his back deliberately turned to the North. Also, our historic courthouse has an immense portrait of the General behind the judge’s bench.

*One of the favorite lunch spots in town is The Farmers’ Market. I can overindulge in collards, stewed okra, smothered steak and friiiiiiiied chicken!

*The bar/restaurant where all the legal deals are sealed in town is called The Veranda, housed in an old historic home, downtown, with a courtyard … okay, so it’s a TROPICAL courtyard with birds-of-paradise flowers and palms and orchids, but I believe it’s got some cherub statues … and they do serve sugar in the tea …and the elderly woman at the piano bar IS named Miss Lila.
*We don’t have cotillion, but we do have the Court of Edisonia. I write about this quirky tradition in my novel, “All This Belongs to Me.” (‘Got me in a lot of trouble, too, I have to say.) Quick history lesson: Thomas Edison used to spend his winters here at his home on the Caloosahatchee River. Shortly after his death, the fine old families of The City of Palms got together and dreamed up the Kingdom of Edisonia. Really, truly, these families dress up every year in royal garb, kind of like something out of Narnia, and they have a ball where they solemnly crown a King and Queen of Edisonia, chosen from a roster of young people whose parents or grandparents are movers and shakers in town. (Read: car dealers, former mayors, funeral parlor owners, appliance dealers, director of the mosquito-control district)
Fort Myers: Not Southern? Hey … Flannery O’Connor would have salivated at such a thing.

*Oak trees dripping with Spanish moss? Got it.

*Boys whose first names are their momma’s maiden names? Got it.

*This time of year, people talk about the heat “cuttin’ off.”

*And we do love our pickup trucks (I drive a white F150), and plenty of them sport the Stars and Bars in some form or another. (Not mine.)

*We have Waffle House.

*We don’t have peaches, but we do have mangoes … with a mango queen crowned each year.

*No kudzu, but we do have melaleuca, a thirsty, prodigious, papery tree brought in a century ago from Australia to help dry out the Everglades (Yes. For real. They actually did this.) This species procreates even more frantically than kudzu; when you try to cut one down it immediately senses death and releases millions of tiny seeds into the air.

Then again, we’re not all that Southern. We don’t name every single bridge and stretch of freeway after someone like Reginald T. Price. We don’t “mash” our elevator buttons. You never hear “fixin’ to,” unless you drive thirty or so miles inland, toward the cattle ranches and orange groves. And with our large Caribbean-Hispanic population, black beans and rice are far more common than grits.

Oh, and I have to admit: our kids aren’t as well-mannered as the ones you’d encounter north of Jacksonville and Tallahassee. I haven’t heard a “yes, sir” or “no, sir” for quite some time. And I miss that.

But Fort Myers … not Southern? Come say it to my face! Now, don't be ugly with me.

Bye, y’all. Until next time.


Ad Hudler’s comic novels (“Househusband,” “Southern Living,” and “All This Belongs to Me,” have been published in five languages and featured on CNN, NPR and The New York Times. He is a stay-at-home dad, landscaper, and novelist who lives with his wife and daughter in their 1954 ranch-style home in the historic district of Fort Myers, just a few blocks from where Thomas Edison used to fish from his pier. He can be reached through his website, AdHudler.com.
And … he always feels strange writing about himself in third-person, as he is doing right now.

Meet the Author: Robert Dalby

Hello readers! I'm Robert Dalby!

My Piggly Wiggly series has been out for over a year now. The debut novel, Waltzing At The Piggly Wiggly, went to trade paper in June, and the sequel, Kissing Babies At The Piggly Wiggly, was released in hardcover this August. Two more novels will follow in 2008 and 2009, continuing the adventures of the citizens of Second Creek, Mississippi, where people ballroom-dance in the aisles of the local Piggly Wiggly, strange weather patterns affect the characters in unexpected ways, and lovable quirks are not only expected but practically required for citizenship.

I'm a Deep Southerner by birth, growing up in historic Natchez, Mississippi, which gave me a boost in observing eccentricity with a smile. Then I spent four wonderful years studying English and Creative Writing at Sewanee (the University of the South) in Tennessee. There's not a lot to do on top of the mountain that Sewanee calls home, so I made the most of my liberal arts education--great for a writer! It might be said that I come by my interest in writing naturally. My father came out of World War II, went to New York as both an editor and writer and turned out scads of fighter pilot and detective stories in the genre that is now referred to as pulp fiction.
As for my writing motifs, I like to portray strong Southern women taking charge of their lives, just as they do in the Piggly Wiggly series. Humor is a big part of my plots, but I was taught that all novels, regardless of the genre, should be plotted like good mysteries. Leave your reader guessing and wanting to turn that page. So, there are a few twists, turns and surprises in my novels to keep my readers on their toes.

Drop on by Second Creek, Mississippi, if you get the chance. Find out who the Nitwitts are. Pull for Mr. Choppy Dunbar, second-generation owner of the Piggly Wiggly, to solve both his business problems and his troublesome romantic past throughout the series. I'll be there waiting for you in spirit!

Here's an interview with Robert Dalby

Q. Where do you see yourself as writer in five years?

A. In five years I'd like to be established enough to do stand-alone novels on a variety of Southern themes. I'm enjoying doing a series, but eventually I'd like to branch out.

Q. What’s the most satisfying part of writing a novel?

A. The most satisfying part of writing a novel is talking to readers after it's been released. It's great to see my work as a finished product, but I spend a lot of time doing library book talks. For me, nothing is more fulfilling than getting feedback from the people who've taken the time to read and think about what I've written.

Q. What writers have inspired you?

A. I've read fellow Southerners like Harper Lee, Ellen Gilchrist, Ellen Douglas and Rebecca Wells with great interest. In an entirely different arena of writing, I've also enjoyed Ayn Rand's work.

Q, What books are on your bedside table right now?

A. Actually, I have the manuscripts of two unpublished writers I'm reading right now. I'm just winding up teaching a writing/getting published course at a local community college, and I'm evaluating the manuscripts of two of my more promising students with a view to recommending them to my agent if I feel they are worthy.

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

A. Be wary of scams of all sorts--no reputable agent will collect a dime from you before selling your work and getting that contract and advance check on your behalf. Remain dedicated and persistent--don't be discouraged by rejection. Don't quit your day job!

Q. What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you at a book-signing?

A. Funniest experience has to be the time a reader pointed out to me after I'd done a brief talk before the signing that I'd ended my book with a preposition. I dug deep and remembered a Winston Churchill quote that my father had given me, and I replied: "That observation, Madam, is something up with which I shall not put!" Everybody in the audience laughed, including the woman

Little Pitcher

by Lynn York
I have just returned home from the Southern Festival of Books. This is always a fun weekend, with readers and writers all running from session to session—in the autumn sunshine of Nashville this year—listening to poets here, short stories there, next year’s best sellers, undiscovered debuts. And outside on the plaza or in the hotel bar or at the authors’ reception, there is talk, endless talk. You can’t get writers to shut up. Someone’s always got a story going, one leading to another. After a few cocktails, the voices become entwined, and I can sit on a bar stool and hear parts of four or five tales.

Many writers will tell you that they were raised in a family of storytellers. My friend and fellow writing group member Pam Duncan wrote about this a few blogs back. I really wish I could’ve met that grandmother of hers, though after reading Moon Women, I do feel as though I’ve met some version of her. I am envious that Pam grew up around such a storyteller. I was not so lucky. Now I did have a very nice childhood, nothing to complain about at all. My parents fed me, they read me books, they taught me to read, but storytelling was not part of our tradition. I was an extrovert born in a family of introverts.

To my family’s dismay, I have always had a natural tendency to tell everything I know. The man who drove my kindergarten carpool warned my parents that they should not say anything to me they didn’t want repeated on the way to school. I myself didn’t see why in the world everybody shouldn’t know I was going to get a new sibling. This incident, and maybe a few others, dried up all the good dinner conversation.

After that, I got the feeling everyone around me had great stories to tell, only no one was telling them to me. This turned me into a child spy. I hid in the bushes under the kitchen window and lay awake at night with my bedroom door cracked, hoping to overhear something vital. I did hear things—fragmented confessions, dirty jokes, snippy exchanges, and a few noises that I couldn’t quite identify—but none of this was enough for me to piece together the whole story. I started to fill in the blanks myself. What I didn’t know, I made up. Happily, this is now my job, but during my adolescence, this tendency seems to have been a bit of a nuisance. According to my mother, my “fantasies” were always more colorful and dramatic than the reality. But I don’t think so…

In my late teens, I was a member of a local band composed mostly of adults. I told my mother there was something suspicious about the group’s oldest members. They were extraordinarily chummy. She blew me off, suggesting that I quit. Decades later, I found out: these people, in their seventies when I knew them, had once been members of a notorious “wife swapping” club. Imagine. Right there in the clarinet section.

One of these days, maybe I’ll find a place for that story in a novel—but in the meantime, it is nice to be grown, to live in a community of writers and storytellers (those that Margaret Maron, in her blog entry, called her “tribe”). As this weekend reminded me, I am lucky to be someone who is paid (a little) to make up stories. Writing is the best profession I can think of, though I still have to fight a genetically-implanted voice that says, “I wouldn’t tell that if I were you…”

I believe that what I tell, and to some extent, the way I tell it, is still shaped by that young nighttime spy. I remain fascinated by the story that lurks underneath the surface of things, the real person that lives behind the public persona, the society that can’t be seen from the street curb. I want to know all the secrets of a widowed piano teacher, that most staid of small town fixtures. I want to understand why an old bachelor has never married. I want to know the story of everyone buried in the family plot. These are the voices I listen for now when I lie awake at night.


-- Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Carrboro, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com and for her writing group, www.onewritinggroup.com.

A Candy Apple Red Camaro and NPR

By Michael Morris


Like all writers, I’m constantly asked ‘did you grow up wanting to be a writer?’ Deep in my soul I want to answer yes. In fact, I’ve often tried to rewrite my past, picturing myself as a young boy sitting in the library devouring the Hardy Boy mysteries. But the reality is my childhood was spent in front of the TV watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch," "Gilligan’s Island" and "The Lucy Show." Although I’d do the required reading for school, it wasn’t until I was a college graduate that I fell in love with reading and then eventually writing.

Sure, I’d had teachers who had encouraged me not only to read but also to write as well. One was my high school English teacher. As a seventeen year old I took her encouragement as confirmation that I should proceed with a planned major in public relations, thinking that I could parlay my writing skill into creating press releases and business reports. After all, it only made sense. Fiction writers lived in Paris and New York – not the small town of Perry, Florida. And if successful writers were from the South they were eccentric alcoholics who lived in decaying antebellum mansions. That really was my world view and sadly enough remained so until after I graduated from college.

When I was twenty-two and working for a US Senator from Florida, I would drive around in a candy apple red Camaro and try to wash away my rural southern accent by repeating words the same way Bob Edwards did on NPR. Thanks to popular culture - arguably the television shows I’d grown up watching - I’d been convinced that sounding southern was equated with being stupid. It was during such a day while listening to NPR and mimicking Mr. Edwards that I was captivated by a voice that almost twenty years later I can only describe as ‘honey dipped.’ I was drawn into the scene being described over the radio waves. The voice read from a short story that seemed divinely appointed for my station in life.

The story was about a Memphis weatherman who had reinvented himself and had bleached his past of his rural heritage. Upon visiting his dying mother in a hospital ICU, the weatherman was forced to come to terms with the choices that he had made. After the reading, I nodded as Bob Edwards commented on how honest and soulfully bare the scene felt. The author went on to share her concern that children of the south, and particularly children of Appalachia, were given a disservice by the advent of satellite television. She explained that children were being taught that something was wrong with the way they sounded – with their accent -- and as a result ended up believing that they must speak like Tom Brokaw. She argued that the children were being stripped of their heritage. The impact of her words wrapped around me the same way they might had if I’d heard them sitting in a sacred sanctuary and I soon became a follower.

That afternoon I went directly to the bookstore and purchased Me And My Baby View The Eclipse, the short story collection from which the speaker – Lee Smith – read from on NPR. While reading the stories my world began to unfold around me. The stories about common everyday people who work at Wal-Mart and Fabric World nourished the idea that I had stories to tell as well. As such, I began to realize that through telling my stories I could capture my own unique heritage of Northern Florida. Lee Smith not only opened my world up to the joy of writing but also gave me pride in being a small town southerner.

Many years later when a job transfer brought me to Lee Smith’s home state of North Carolina, I became a groupie. Yes, I became one of those people at book signings who lingers in the back of the line, allowing others to step in front so that I could have uninterrupted time to talk with Lee Smith. After completing my first novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, I stood in the back in one of those lines and mustered the courage to ask the writer I idolized to take a look at my own work. Being the warm and generous person that she is, Lee Smith graciously agreed to read the manuscript. I didn’t realize that protocol typically calls for the manuscript to be accepted by a publisher before the writer seeks an author quote but Lee Smith never let on otherwise. Her kindness shines as brightly as her talent.

I’ll never forget the evening I received a letter from Lee Smith about my novel. It was on a Saturday, during the fourth of July holiday weekend. I hurriedly ran into the bathroom and locked the door, thinking that if she politely told me to move on with other endeavors I could flush the letter down the toilet and my family would never know the difference. My heart raced as I read her words – encouraging words – words that would become the first blurb I’d ever receive. In that moment, my writing life and reading life had come full circle. The author I admired most had given me her stamp of approval. The road to publication would take another year but the words I’d received from that talented writer who I’d first heard while driving around in a red Camaro gave me the fuel I needed to finish the excursion. I am forever grateful and try to extend the same helpfulness to writers who now cross my path. It’s all about the journey, no matter where we first began.

www.michaelmorrisbooks.com

The Writing Path

by Pamela Duncan

When you grow up in a small North Carolina town believing all authors are either dead or live in New York City, it’s hard to imagine becoming one yourself. And yet, deep inside me, there was always this knowing. As I read Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Chris of Coorabeen--all stories of curious, independent little girls who grow up to be writers--I recognized myself in Jo March, Anne Shirley, Chris McNeale. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized what that meant and found words for it: I wanted to be a writer.

My mother always believed that since I loved to read books so much, I could probably write one if I wanted to, but when it came time to go to college, we thought journalism was the only way to make a living as a writer. A journalism degree and two years on the college paper at UNC-Chapel Hill gave me a great writing foundation to build on, but it also made me realize I didn’t want to be a reporter.

After college, I worked for a while at a bookshop in Chapel Hill, reading a lot, talking about writing, but still not doing anything about it. One day a coworker pointed to a customer and said, “Hey, you ought to read her books because she writes like you talk.” I immediately picked up Oral History and reading it changed my life. Here was a book about my people, people I didn’t think anybody would ever write books about, much less want to read about. After years of floundering blindly, looking for a way into the world of writing, Lee Smith’s work opened the door and turned on the light.

When I heard she taught writing at North Carolina State University, I knew somehow, someday I’d take that class. In the ten years it took me to get there, I devoured every southern author I could find, went to every reading in the area, subscribed to writers magazines, read interviews with writers wherever I could find them. I did everything possible to immerse myself in writing; everything, that is, except write.

I never wrote a lot growing up anyway, just bad poetry, random journal entries, attempts at romance novels, essays here and there. What I did instead, from the time I can remember, was listen. They were part of the very air I breathed, those wonderful storytelling voices of my family--and in particular the voice of my maternal grandmother--telling the stories of our lives, laughing to keep from crying, creating myths from next to nothing. Even near the end, when Nanny didn’t know she was in the world most of the time, she told stories. I remember lying in bed across the room from her, trying so hard to stay awake and listen, eventually falling asleep, only to wake hours later and find her still talking, still telling those stories, unable to stop.

When she died in 1989, I had no choice but to begin, finally, to write. She wasn’t there to tell me stories anymore, so I had to tell them to myself. Right after Christmas that year, I heard her voice clear as day telling me it was time to get busy or shut up (though she said it in a much more colorful way). I got the message. In January 1990 I signed up for my first writing workshop, terrified but determined, and at long last started learning how to write stories.

That first workshop led ultimately to the Master’s program (now a full-fledged MFA program) in Creative Writing at NC State. By the time I got there, I had several chunks of something I was too afraid to call a novel. My teachers, who believed in me before I was able to believe in myself, allowed me to call it chunks but insisted it was a novel. And they were right. In 1996 I finished my Master’s thesis, the first draft of my first novel, Moon Women, a story about mountain women like my grandmother.

While a student at State, a couple of talented writers who had graduated ahead of me came back to visit filled with bitterness and disillusionment. They’d left school excited and hopeful for their writing, only to run smack up against the brick wall of publishing, and that scared me to death. I’d naively imagined that writing the novel was the hard part and the rest would somehow magically fall into place. After a lot of soul searching, I decided to accept the hard truth, that my chances of ever getting published were slim and none, but even so, writing would still matter to me, and I would keep on doing it. To paraphrase one of my favorite characters, Ivy Rowe in Fair and Tender Ladies, it was the writing itself that signified.

As true as that felt at the time, I don’t know how long I could’ve kept it up without the validation of publication. Probably not forever. I’m not that noble. But I got lucky, not once or twice, but over and over again. The first and best luck was finding the program at State and studying with the amazingly talented and generous creative writing faculty there. They nudged and nurtured until I got the novel out on paper; they fed me names and leads until I found an agent; and they celebrated with me and for me when I got a book deal three years after finishing the program.

E.L. Doctorow said, “[Writing is] like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Life is like that too. As a child dreaming of becoming a writer, I couldn’t imagine being where I am today, just as I can’t imagine where I’ll be tomorrow. I try not to dwell on the destination because I don’t want to miss what’s right in front of me. Being a writer is a dream come true, being a published author is gravy, and I’m happy to report that I didn’t have to die or move to New York City to do either one.

(Novelist Pamela Duncan is the author of Moon Women, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award Finalist, and Plant Life, which won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. Visit her website at http://www.pameladuncan.com/.)

A Southern Writer? (First posted 9/23/07)

After writing twenty southern mysteries and two southern novels, I am still surprised to find myself on a blog for southern author. I started my career determined not to become one.

You see, at my New York college I took a class on southern literature. The prof started us out with Sherwood Anderson (from Ohio), progressed to Mark Twain (southern?), and finally got to the only three southern writers she felt deserved the title: Faulkner, Welty, and O’Connor.

I wonder how other students found the class? As far as I could tell, our professor regarded the South as a place of hollow, stereotypical people drearily yearning for past glories. When I tried to argue that not all of us were poor, regressive, fundamentalist, foul mouthed, illiterate, or deranged, I was accused of not knowing the “real” South. Me, who had lived here all my life and had four generations of family lying in the same North Carolina cemetery!

I left the class vowing that whatever kind of writer I became, I would never be a southern writer. I could not depict the South that Yankees wanted to read about.

That is still a struggle. There is the South we who live here know and love, and there is the South that the rest of the country believes exists. Sometimes they overlap, but they are not the same.

How can we get past their stereotypes without creating stereotypes of our own?

How can we write about what we love without denigrating parts of the country other people love?

How can we depict not “the South” but the contradictions and varied conditions that exist here?

One December my mother-in-law visited me in Mobile. We spent the morning at the home of a welfare mother whom I was helping to get her GED. We lunched at a local bar-be-cue, sitting among men who wore farmer’s caps and drove pickup trucks from need, not for status. That afternoon we took tea with a friend who was staying at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear. As we left that elegant hotel, Frances said, “You certainly get around.”

Yet all of those are the South I know and love. All of those are who I am. I have cousins who are classical musicians and one who was the North Carolina banjo picking champion. How can I convey all of that without pandering to stereotypes other people have about the South?

The best I can figure, I have to write not just what I know, but what I am.

Years ago before a move to Chicago, my husband purchased a book entitled THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA. It broke down the continent into nine geographic regions as distinguishable as individual nations of Europe, and discussed the mannerisms, values, language, and traditions that set each of them apart. It was a valuable aid to us as we moved among mid-westerners and had to learn a new culture, even a new language. Who knew that some folks called fatback “salt pork”?

Our first Sunday there, two little sisters wanted to know, “What is Barnabas?”

“He’s a boy,” I replied, thinking his blond curls confused them.

“No!” They propped small fists on skinny hips. “We’re half Norwegian and half Italian. What is Barnabas?”

Stymied by generations of Southern mongrel breeding, I stammered, “He’s half Alabamian and half North Carolinian.” They accepted that as exotic enough.

So it is.

Waiting on the Glamour

Waiting on the Glamour

A southern author – when I hear those words I think “Margaret Mitchell”. Now that I am in the column listed under this category, I figured glamour would be quick on the heels of the title. Seriously – wouldn’t you think it also?

Let me introduce myself – Patti Callahan Henry. I am just finishing my fifth book – THE ART OF KEEPING SECRETS, which will come out in June 2008. My last book, BETWEEN THE TIDES came out last summer (June 2007). I started on this writer’s journey when I was twelve years old and vowed that I would one day be an author.

Blaise Pascal says that 'things are always at their best in the beginning'. Well, in the beginning, I believed the author's life was one of glamour, book signings, fame and red-carpet treatment. I had imagined a writing career since I could hold a crayon and draw the cover of my new bestselling book. But, as we tend to do, I gave up on my dream of becoming an author until I was well into my thirties—and even then I still imagined the fame and glory that would come with such a career.

Do you hear the screeching sounds of my imagination coming to an abrupt halt? Yes, I am so blessed to be a published author who is now releasing her fourth book with Penguin/NAL book and writing her fifth book, yet I often need a large dose of reality.

So, I'll start at the beginning. The first thing I did was embark on this career with faith, determination and enough naivety to believe someone would love me enough to publish my work. I started going to workshops and writing conferences. This particular section of my journey should have offered me a hint that there wasn't any glamour headed my way. There is nothing glamorous about sweaty palms, heart palpitations and sitting in the back of a conference room too scared to speak to the lecturing author or creative writing teacher at the front of the room. But I had confidence it would get better. Really, I did.

Then, through a miracle of grace and glory, I obtained a literary agent. Here it comes—here comes the glamour, wouldn't you think? I found someone important who believed in my work and loved my writing, and I knew the publishing world would love it as much as we did. I sat down to rewrite again and again, then finally put the first book away and started something new. It is not so glamorous sitting in one's basement typing and retyping, outlining, spell checking and searching for character motivation.

Then it happened—I received an offer from a major publishing house. Glamour would be waiting at my front door with the contract, right? Well, not so much. It would be at least eighteen months until my book was released, and in the meantime I had to rewrite, reword and restructure a story I thought was perfect.

Now book release day came and guess what? Nothing changed. I still did the laundry, drove car pool, bleached my son's baseball uniform, then went to the grocery store and forgot the toilet paper... again. My husband wanted to know if I picked up the dry cleaning (which I didn't); my daughter wanted to know where her dance uniform was (I forgot); and I just wanted to stand in Barnes and Noble and stare at my book on the front table.

Where were the launch parties, the photo-ops, the cocktail parties in honor of my literary awards? Whoops.

Then for my third novel, When Light Breaks, the publisher sent me on a fifteen-city book tour. Now I would absolutely see the glamour. I mean, haven't you seen those TV shows and movies where the author is all dressed up and signing books to a line of avid fans?

Somewhere around the ninth city I was eating something that resembled a sandwich out of a vending machine when I realized something huge, something so big that I had to sit down in a dirty plastic chair in the airport after my flight was delayed and laugh: It is not about the glamour.

It's about the readers, the lives my story might touch, my gift, my passion for words, and most importantly, it's all about the story. There are many dazzling moments along this road of authorship, even if those moments aren't glamorous. There are the readers who adore my story, old friends who show up at signings on the road, booksellers who love books and recommend them to readers because they actually know what the customer wants. There are new friends, new ideas and other authors who want to talk, share and laugh about the journey we're all stumbling through together. All this, and more, is exceedingly far beyond any glamour I can imagine.